Tuesday, 12 August 2014

13 August 2014

This is shaping
up as a very unusual election indeed.

Elections are
usually the opportunity to debate the future direction of the country and where
alternative governments might lead it. This election, at least based on the
evidence of the phony-campaign to date, seems to be an almost policy-free zone.
What policies have been announced have been either a reiteration of what has
been released already, or so bold and grandiose to defy the reality of being implementable,
leaving the suspicion that their real purpose has been as a rallying call to shore
up the wavering party faithful.

The lure of the
dog-whistle seems to have been more important – the use of selective comment to
persuade voters that a particular party is on their side. That is why New
Zealand First is playing the race card so blatantly. In the just ended
Parliament one or two of its MPs frequently looked and sounded like misplaced
members of the Ku Klux Klan, and now that appeal to the extreme red-neck
portion of the electorate has been legitimised through the racist overtones of
the party’s campaign launch last weekend. And the Conservatives, long suspected
to be really “hang ‘em and birch ‘em” proponents on law and order have
reinforced that sentiment by the recruitment of Sensible Sentencing’s leader as
a candidate.

In their own
ways, the two main parties are also blowing the dog-whistle. National’s
emphasis on protecting the fledgling Budget surplus is as much about sending signals
of its reliability and credibility as an economic manager, as it is about
enhancing the reputation of the Minister of Finance. Labour’s apparent
willingness to appear looser with the purse strings serves the dual purpose of
sending the signal it is more warm and caring, but not as fiscally
irresponsible as the Greens, who, if they do well enough, will be tapping on
Labour’s shoulder for the role of lead party of the left.

While this is all
good fun, especially for the salivating commentariat who love to analyse and
re-analyse such signs to the point of extinction, it is not doing much to
inform voters of what the parties really stand for, or what new ideas they
might be ready to spring upon an unsuspecting electorate a little way down the
track.

In previous
elections the party manifesto has fulfilled this role. In 1987, there was shock
and horror when Labour did not release its manifesto to the public until a week
after it had been safely re-elected. Nowadays, the same shock and horror seems
reserved for the suggestion that a party might actually have a detailed
manifesto at all!

For its part, UnitedFuture
has never been too worried about the political norm. A few years ago, we
campaigned on the central role of families, at a time when all our advice was
that to do so would be divisive, because families came in so many shapes and
forms. Now, every party prides itself on being family friendly. In 2004, we argued
that the foreshore and seabed was public domain that should be vested in all
New Zealanders. No, that could never be, the other parties said – yet that was
precisely the solution the present government adopted in 2010, to general
public approval.

Well, we are
about to break the mould again. Early next week we will release a detailed
on-line manifesto which every voter will have access to, as they consider their
voting options. Maybe, that will be another case of being first to set a new
trend!